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nearly wet ourselves with the laughing, especially in the one where he has the magic remote control, and can make the world stop and start at will, and keeps stopping it just so he can whip off nurses’ skirts and things. Or like the times when I was younger and me and Dad would go for long beach walks on holiday in Cork. And I’d be his best boy, asking him loads of questions about science and about the universe, volcanoes, earthquakes and sharks, strictly natural history stuff, and he’d be able to answer them all, no matter how tricky they were.
    Me: Are there killer sharks in Ireland?
    Dad: No, only basking sharks and they don’t kill people.
    Me: Where are they?
    Dad: Way out to sea, way beyond Galway Bay.
    Me: Are they big?
    Dad: Yes, around thirty feet long.
    Me: How long is that?
    Dad: As long as a small bus.
    Me: Why don’t they eat people?
    Dad: Because they can only eat little fish.
    Me: Why don’t they eat bigger fish?
    Dad: Because they have a tiny hole in their throats, and they swim around all day with their mouths open, straining all the little fish out of the water.
    Me: So, if you were swimming in the water in Galway and a basking shark came by with his mouth wide open could you get swallowed up?
    Dad: No, he’d probably choke on you before he swallowed you properly.
    Me: But he’d kill you doing it?
    Dad: Probably.
    Me: I knew it.

4
Tainted Love
    The ban on Mozzo is strictly enforced by Mam and Maura Connell. They both tell him, in no uncertain terms, that me and Gary are not coming out to play whenever he calls. They confer with each other on the phone and say things like, I’ve a good mind to go round there and plant her, meaning Mozzo’s mam Janet, with the bill, only I know she couldn’t pay it. Little cheeky pup, meaning Mozzo.
    Mozzo soon gets the point, and stops calling. Me and Gary become best friends again and spend the rest of the summer cycling around on our bikes, spitting off the overpass on the Oakfield dual carriageway and watching the sweaty Sorrows hockey matches with the lads every Friday. But now, because of Helen Macdowell, the girls wear big thick gumshields, making them all look like Rocky. Shitty-Pants Sweeny, named after the day he came out with a big shite bulging out of the back of his pants, says it doesn’t matter, as long as they still wear the short skirts he’ll keep watching them play. No one says anything about Helen Macdowell, although Gary’s mam heard that she’d gone mad and had to leave the country to try and start her life all over again, but this time as a scarface instead of the pretty one that everyone fancies.
    When me and Gary come back from our cycling trips we sit in my and Fiona’s room and listen to my boombox. There’s Kim Wilde’s ‘Kids in America’ or Soft Cell’s ‘Tainted Love’ if we’re in the mood for a bop. And we are. Gary’s great like that, he doesn’t laugh at your moves and I don’t laugh at his. I just press play and the two of us stand up on the fancy rug and go for it, doing our thing while the fella from Soft Cell with the broken nose and bright lipstick screams ‘Don’t touch me PLEASE, I cannot stand the way you TEASE!’ My moves are quite simple, I go from side to side, letting my head lead me each time, but when I’m totally relaxed I let my shoulders lead me too. My legs do their own thing. Gary’s moves are dead complicated. He dances exactly like they do on the telly. Just like the Soft Cell fella, he’s got all the hand moves, waves his arms about like he’s trying to fling some slime off them, and nods his head brilliantly while mouthing the words, pretending that he’s really on
Top of the Pops
, singing in front of everyone. You can tell he loves dancing, coz I’m always the one who has to call it quits.
    If I want to slow the pace I slap on the tape of Foreigner, ‘Waiting for a Girl Like You’. It’s a real tape, one that I was given for Christmas, whereas Soft Cell and Kim Wilde are just